Our last day biking! Today was supposed to be 36km and ended up in the mid-40’s, for good reasons. Deb and I were up early so we walked into Grein and wandered around the cute little ancient town. They know how to mix the new world with the old world. Things are built to be permanent here and they respect their history. So to see a telephone line on a thousand year old wall is not unusual and tastefully done. The streets and many roads are narrow but if there is a little room they have a bike track and a walking track. They are looking beyond the automobile. And if it’s a skinny road, the cars always are respectful of pedestrians and bikes.
Today we leave the river to climb into the hills. It’s a bit longer than the river route but very different with many farms and rolling hills. A lot of crops like corn and hay, some vegetables like pumpkins and squash, some tractors here and there and some old stone buildings and bridges. I decided to wear the e-bike out today since I have been babying it all week. I set the control to give me maximum power and it did. We had a couple of really steep sections that it (and I) powered up. I use Google Translate when there are roadside signs and it works great. I actually used it live on Claudia’s talk in German tonight and it was very good.
We stopped once for coffee (a national pastime here) with the folks from the midwest and ended up splitting a “farmers donut”. We stopped after that to eat our sandwiches. Dessert before breakfast but a great progressive lunch.
We descended the hills back to the river and had a pretty good breeze, e-bike still on max. We got to Mauthausen before the boat today so we added a trip to the Mauthausen concentration camp to our day. It was up a very steep hill so Deb was able to pedal up but Milo walked.
The consensus is this is not a fun or cheery place to visit but it’s an important one. The Nazis gassed people, tortured people, shot people, hung people, did experiments on people and worked people until they died. What state of mind can good people be brought to to do this kind of thing? A warning to everyone everywhere.
Back to the ship down the long steep hill. We removed all of our stuff from the bikes and said goodbye to them. Then back on the boat. Tomorrow’s changeover day on the ship which means out with us smelly old bikers and in with another batch of good smelling new bikers. Caudia gave us all the gritty details, paying any bar tabs, marking luggage for the train station, filling out evaluation forms, staying out of the way while luggage and people exit and enter. Quite a little dance these guys do every week. We had a send off toast and thanked the whole crew, drank some bubbly and had Baked Alaska for dessert tonight.
It’s been a great week and my legs are a little sore and my butt hurts.
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